


Devil's Gonna Follow Me Wherever I Go

by Nemhaine42



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Mild Blood, Non-Graphic Violence, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:43:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3219446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemhaine42/pseuds/Nemhaine42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy had felt a bit silly flagging a security alert for a suspicious package but she had known the box wasn’t anything they were actually expecting. Which meant that she wasn’t in the lab when it blew up, just outside it. Clint hadn’t told her much, barely anything in fact. Just that they were going somewhere safe for a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil's Gonna Follow Me Wherever I Go

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by reading crappy Mills & Boon fiction at work and thinking, "well, shit. I could have done better than that." Nearly three months and 17K words later, I don't know if I achieved that but here we are. Many thanks to my wonderful beta, readbycandlelight, who waited patiently for me to finish and helped me write the smut.

It was dark long before they got to the safe house. Darcy couldn’t see anything but the dirt track right in front of the headlights, but Clint seemed to know where he was going. She was tired and achey and cold. The cuts where the glass had bitten into her skin stung, she desperately wanted a shower and all she knew was that it was getting on for an hour since they’d passed any semblance of a town.

Not being able to see any landscape features, and only intermittent houses, was giving her serious doubts about the ‘safe’ part of the safe house idea. If she didn’t know any better, she might say Clint was taking her out here to kill her. But if he’d wanted to do that, he might as well have left her back in the lab. Darcy had initially felt a bit silly flagging a security alert for a suspicious package but she was responsible for ordering parts and keeping invoices, so she had known the box wasn’t anything they were actually expecting. Which meant that she wasn’t in the lab when it blew up, just outside it, and that she was left with only cuts and bruises from debris, rather than winding up in the hospital. But that was still a serious and scary security threat so she was bundled up and corralled into a plane, with Barton giving her ten minutes to pack essentials, and then spent God only knows how long with Clint driving her deep into the countryside. Clint hadn’t told her much, barely anything in fact. Just to turn her phone off and keep it that way, and that they were going somewhere safe for a while.

“We’re almost there, Darce,” he said, stone-faced. The laid-back sarcasm which had endeared him to her had vanished when he’d been given her detail, and when she’d asked him anything about their destination or whoever sent the package, he’d snapped at her. Clint spent a lot of time hanging around their lab; he drank all their coffee and did trick shots with rubber band slingshots and bits of eraser. Jane called him a nuisance but never actually told him to get lost. Now the friendly Clint, who brought her pastries and told her where good hotels were for field studies, had been left back in the burnt-out lab in New York. And, so far, serious Agent Barton was proving nothing but short-tempered and bossy, pushing and pulling her every which way.

Eventually they took a right and Clint pulled into a curving gravel driveway. There was a barn that would not have looked out of place in a horror movie, and a farmhouse which had recently been painted white. He made Darcy stay in the car while he checked the perimeter, in what he called precautionary measures and Darcy called overkill. But it was cold in the car and would only be colder outside, so she stayed put until Clint came back and grabbed their bags out of the trunk. Apparently, Clint’s version of ‘essentials’ consisted mainly of weapons.

Inside the house, it felt unlived in but not neglected. Like when you came back from a long vacation. Through doors left ajar, she saw a dining room that had seen better days and a living room mid-renovation. Clint set the bags down by the stairs and lead her into a large kitchen. This too had a fresh lick of paint, new fittings and a restored wood-burning stove. He lit a fire, trying to warm the room, and switched on the coffee machine, all while Darcy stood there wondering if he was still going to bark at her for breathing the wrong way.

“Where are we?” she asked, sounding weary.

“Someplace safe.”

“Yeah, someplace where, Clint?”

He hesitated and managed to look a little guilty, “it’s better if I don’t tell you.”

“Can I turn my phone on yet?” she huffed. Exhaustion was making her grumpy and frustrated.

“No.”

“Is there a house phone?”

“You can’t call anyone, Darce,” he said, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck, “No-one’s supposed to know where you are.”

_“I_ don’t know where I am. This is the ass-end of nowhere, Clint! I don’t even know which state I’m in! Is there even another house for a hundred miles?!”

“There’s people half a mile down the road.”

“Oh, _wow!_ ”

Darcy thumped down onto one of the chairs at the table and tried not to cry. She shivered, unsure if it was from the shock of the last twelve hours or the lingering cold. She had been separated from Jane and Erik and had no idea where they’d been taken either. She couldn’t call Jane, couldn’t call the tower, couldn’t call her mother. All she could do was sit there and stay still. The crackle of the fire and the ticking clock seemed deafening, until Clint set down a mug of coffee in front of her.

“There’s no creamer or anything, but there’s sugar,” he offered. He still sounded closed-off and she didn’t meet his eyes.

“S’fine,” she sniffled, cupping her hands around the mug.

“I packed some rations for tonight and breakfast, I’ll go to the store tomorrow.”

“Are we getting a flight for that too?” she’d meant it as a joke but it just came out sounding deeply bitter.  

“No, _we_ are not getting a flight, _I_ will drive,” he said pointedly, “ _You_ can chill out here. Sleep in.”

Sleep sounded glorious but she was getting near the end of her rope. She knew she’d do nothing like ‘chill out’ if she woke to find Clint gone in the morning, leaving her alone hundreds of miles from home, knowing and doing nothing. The only thing keeping her from a frightened, emotional meltdown was his steady, familiar presence.

“What if I need to buy tampons?” she tried.

“Yeah? I’ll buy you tampons,” Clint retorted with a singularly unimpressed face, “What do you like? Those ones with the little cardboard cases around ‘em, or the ones where you just use your fingers? What do you think I am, twelve?”

Okay, she hadn’t _really_ expected that to work, “You threw a paper airplane down my shirt like last week.”

“Darcy, we both know that’s not the issue here. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want but-”

“I don’t want to be on my own here, Clint,” she mumbled into her coffee, vulnerable at the admission.  The last thing she wanted was for him to start treating her like a scared child, but she couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving her there.

Clint let out a weary sigh and, at last, his expression softened. He reached across and gently stroked her cheek. She swallowed the hot lump in her throat and tried not to launch herself into his arms. She _really_ wanted a hug.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, tucking one finger under her chin and turning her to look at him, “I’m here to make sure you’re safe.”

He spent a little more time cupping her face in his hands and reassuring her that nothing would happen to her while he was there, then set about heating up the rations he’d brought. They were about as good as the food she’d eaten in college, or in the very early days of her internship with Jane, which is to say they were pretty terrible. She was mildly horrified to think that this was what you had to eat when you were out on missions, risking your life. No matter what arguments Clint came up with, she was definitely not staying put tomorrow while he went and got groceries. Not if he thought this stuff was edible. Okay, no, he readily warned her that it was not - _“try not to look at it too much and it’ll go down better”_ \- but he still ate it up willingly. Maybe if she got a hold of something she could cook properly, she’d feel more at home.

After clean-up and another fortifying cup of coffee, Clint shepherded her into the bathroom to wash. She could hear him rummaging around in cupboards, digging out bed sheets, and moving their bags upstairs. The bathroom had already been renovated but, after a long period of going unused, was covered in a layer of dust that tickled her nose. There were half empty bottles of shampoo and body wash on a shelf, and an encrusted tube of toothpaste that made her glad she’d brought her own.

While the water ran and heated up, Darcy gingerly stripped out of her clothes. She felt almost like she’d been run over by a bus. Several of the larger cuts where she’d guarded her face behind her arms looked red and angry; she’d sweated into them all day and they promised an infection if they didn’t get cleaned. She’d bitten her lip and bumped into a lot of stuff in the rush to get away from the lab, so there were nasty bruises forming on her legs. She leaned heavily on the sink, feeling like she could just fall asleep standing right there if she thought her legs would hold her.

Since about the halfway point in their flight over, her shoulder had been hurting more and more and gotten incrementally stiffer to the point where she could only just pull her shirt over her head. She’d fallen when the explosion went off and landed on her shoulder and the adrenaline had kept her from noticing the injury. Now, a large russet-coloured bruise had formed on the muscle connecting to her upper arm, painful to the touch.

The warm water ran with little pressure but stopped her muscles shaking and loosened them up. Her shoulder still throbbed angrily and she’d have to find an ice pack later, but for now she soaked herself clean. Water and soap nipped at the cuts on her arm, though they were all the better off for it. She stood for a long time just letting the water flow down her face, not wanting to leave the warm shower for the chilly house. More than once she heard Clint outside the door, listening to tell if she was done yet. He probably needed to use the bathroom after her, and she was using up the hot water. But it was so warm, and self-contained; she could almost forget that she was in the middle of nowhere, hiding from people trying to kill her.

She dragged her hand up and reluctantly turned the shower off, standing under it until the last drips had fallen. Steam swirled around the bathroom but it was still cooler than the hot water so Darcy snatched a towel to bundle herself into. She kept her hair rolled up in a smaller one to save it dripping everywhere, roughly dried herself off, and pulled on her pyjamas. She still didn’t want to go back out; the house no doubt remained freezing and, since Darcy hadn’t been told where she’d be taken or what sort of accommodation to expect, the night clothes she’d packed were definitely not going to cut the mustard. She supposed she’d have to sleep in her coat. She stepped back out into the hallway and, yes, the house was still cold. And she felt it worse having wet hair.

When she went back to the kitchen, she found Clint in comfier-looking clothes and brewing yet more coffee. Both of them inhaled great quantities of the stuff back in the lab, and it had been the first thing they’d found in common. They leaned on tables while Jane fettled her equipment, and drank coffee strong enough to strip paint. A good thing they did too, because black coffee was about the only sustenance the house could offer until someone did the grocery run.

Darcy dumped her towels and dirty clothes in a washbasket near the door. Clint looked over and his eyes raked up and down her cupcake pyjama pants and short-sleeved tshirt with skepticism, “Are you going to be warm enough?”

“No,” she said flatly, “I didn’t get much of an itinerary to work from, did I?”

He conceded with a lazy nod, and told her to go sit next to the stove while he jogged up the stairs. She heard soft thumps from boxes being shoved aside and opened. It was so quiet out here. She could practically hear the shuffle of Clint’s socks on the carpet. When she looked out through the kitchen window, she saw a cluster of woodland at the far end of the yard catching the edge of the light from the house. Beyond that, it was viscous black night. Darcy had no idea what was beyond the porch, and thinking about it made the floor level between her and Clint feel like far too much.

Clint came back with a large hoodie - black, with a US flag patch sewn onto one of the sleeves - and said there was nothing that would be a closer fit. And it certainly looked miles too big, like it would be baggy on him, let alone her. But she swiftly yanked it on; some clothes only fit when they didn’t. The hoodie was thick, and still fleecy on the inside. It had that attic smell clinging to it but underneath was the residual scent of aftershave or something. It reminded her of the lab, of pastries, and coffee in styrofoam cups. _That_ smell she knew: it was the smell of Clint first thing in the morning, a piece of familiarity that put a tiny smile on her face.

She looked around the kitchen, at how Clint knew where everything was: where all the dishes went, where the sheets were, and how best to warm the place up. He moved around almost absently. And he had a stash of his own clothes boxed up upstairs.

“This is your house,” she said bluntly. It wasn’t a safe house, at least not in any official sense. This wasn’t where teams of agents came to lay low. Just Clint. There was rudimentary security, nothing obvious beyond the deadbolt locks on the door, and no way of calling home. The remodelled parts of the house were just what Clint had gotten around to doing. It was the most personal thing about him she’d ever seen.

And he seemed to notice how very intimate she thought it was that he brought her here. There was affection and openness in his eyes as he said softly, “Yeah, it’s my house. We’re safe here.”

“I can give you the official tour, if you want,” he said, fidgeting with a dish towel, “unless you wanna hit the hay?”

“Tour’s good,” she replied, even though sleep might end up claiming her halfway up the stairs. She wanted more of the closeness, the feeling that he was sharing all this with her, as well as sheltering her in it.

“Okay, we start with the most important thing,” he pointed to the counter, “that’s the coffee machine. Natasha got me one of those fancy espresso makers, it’s in that top cupboard. I tend to drink straight from the pot, so I don’t know if you want to use that instead.”

“Yeah, I know,” she smiled and rolled her eyes, “the amount of times I’ve caught you doing it in the tower…”

He grinned at her, unrepentant, and took her hand to show her the rest of the house. He covered the practical stuff first; where the towels were, where she could do laundry, the squeaky floorboard at the bottom of the stairs he hadn’t fixed yet. He told her about the remodelling he’d done so far - _“I went into the crawl space under the kitchen and a raccoon ran into my face”_ \- and showed her the rooms he’d yet to touch. The dining room was a piece of crap and wasn’t something Clint had much use for, so it would be last. He wasn’t sure whether to keep the upstairs office, or if he should turn it into another spare bedroom or something else. Darcy didn’t say much, apart from the requisite ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ to keep him going, and she tried not to move in any way that would suggest she wanted him to let go of her hand. She just enjoyed listening to him talk about something so _normal_. Not arrow flight physics, not infiltration tactics (she wasn’t supposed to have been listening to those anyway), just something that everyday people talked about and planned for themselves. It made her envisage herself right there next to him as he finished the lights in the living room, or repainted the hallway ceiling, which was just jumping so many guns.

Darcy flagged in the middle of Clint musing over whether or not he should convert the attic into a games room, her brain doing nothing but screaming at her to rest her weary head on Clint’s shoulders and sleep. Her exhaustion was hardly subtle so Clint lead her along the upstairs landing to a couple of doors at the end of the hall.

“This one’s your room,” he explained, opening the door on the right and finally letting her hand slip from his, “Your stuff’s in the corner. I stuck some extra blankets on the bed, if you get cold. My room’s opposite, you know, if you need anything.”

Her bedroom was smallish, with cream walls and deep red curtains that pooled on the floor in velvety heaps. The kind her mother would have taken up and used the leftovers as tie-backs. The maroon carpet had obviously been vacuumed very recently and, unlike every other room she’d been in, there was no noticeable dust on any of the furniture. Clint had cleaned her room while she’d been in the shower, and tried his hardest to make sure she’d be comfortable as well as safe.

She turned to face him, smiling warmly at the equally weary figure leaning in the doorframe, “Thanks, Clint. Have a good night.”

“Goodnight, Darce. Sleep tight,” he replied and turned to go back downstairs, closing her door behind him.

The room and the bed were still cold so she sat up a while, hoping to build up some body heat in the blankets. She wasn’t ready to turn out the light just yet, filled with the unease that comes with trying to sleep in an unfamiliar place, and she listened to the sounds of Clint squaring the kitchen away. She heard the back door open and the crunch of boots on the gravel outside. There was the creaking of an old door further from the house and Darcy left her cocoon of sheets to poke apart the curtains. She hardly thought he’d leave her there the moment she was in bed but not knowing exactly where he was gave her an anxious bubbling in her chest. She saw light coming from the barn and thought Clint far braver than her for venturing there in the dark. Whatever he was doing didn’t take long and soon the light went out and his footsteps wound their way back to the house.

She smiled at the unmistakable sound of the squeaky floorboard and Clint sighing. He came back up the stairs and she tucked herself back under the comforter. He paused outside her door, seeing the light from under it and she wondered if he would check on her. She kept still and he headed into his own room. She wanted to ask what he’d been doing outside, what on earth was in the barn but her eyelids felt so heavy and, at long last, Darcy laid her head into the deep, cool pillow.

It didn’t even feel like minutes before she reopened her eyes to the weak light of new morning. It was earlier that she usually woke up and she figured she’d lost a timezone. Her shoulder felt like it had been set in concrete and her legs felt like jelly, but it was better than the risen zombie sensation from before. She dragged herself out of her soft bed and threw on clean clothes, with Clint’s hoodie on top, and headed downstairs. She found Clint halfway in the back door, taking in a basket of logs for the stove.

There was coffee and the breakfast edition of the disgusting ration packs, and they sat together at the kitchen table, both flitting their gazes from the window to each other every now and then. The sun was just poking above the horizon and cast thin, golden light that caught in Clint’s hair. It looked frosty outside, like their breath would come out in great plumes and puffs, and little songbirds darted around the garden searching for food in the bushes.

“Ooh! You have chickadees!” Darcy exclaimed, sitting upright to better see out the window. The little black and white birds hopped around on branches, closer and closer to the house, knowing that where there were people, there were sure to be leftovers.

“We should put food out for them,” she said, scooting forward in her chair, “They’re so cute. Did you know that Black-capped Chickadees can lower their body temperatures to conserve energy in winter? And they store food, kinda like squirrels, and they can remember where they hid it for about a month. My Aunt Meryl does this thing where she goes outside and stands really still for ages and gets her garden birds to eat out of her hands. But I mean, I don’t have the patience for that… what?”

“Nothin’,” Clint smiled at her, watching her expression and her still sleep-ruffled hair rather than the birds puffing themselves up outside. It was an odd look he gave her, attentive and amused at the same time, like he was in on some secret joke.

“They’re cute little poofballs, I like them. So shut up,” Darcy chided.

Clint leaned across the table with an open-mouthed grin, “Well, what about other, bigger, stronger birds? You like them too?”

“Oh, you mean like… falcons?” she teased, laughing.

His shoulders sagged and he pretended to pout dejectedly, “Oh. I see. I’ll just go warm up the car then, so I can go to the store.”

“What? No! You’re not leaving me here,” she gasped, chasing him out of the kitchen and through the hallway, “If I change my answer to ‘hawks’ can I come?”

After a bit more debate about who, exactly, was going to town, and a lot more stubborn protest from Darcy, they were in the car and back on the road. In the crisp daytime, Darcy could see flat, dark gold fields stretching into the distance. There were sparse trees, by now missing their leaves, and every few fields they passed a house not dissimilar to theirs. It was a far cry from the dazzling city she’d left behind and different still to Puente Antiguo or Tromsø. She wanted to quip about not being in Kansas anymore, but thought not to since it might actually _be_ Kansas.

“I still don’t know what state I’m in, by the way,” she mentioned. There were no signposts or billboards to let her even guess where she was, beyond the fact that she was probably in the Midwest somewhere. Unless she was in Canada.

“Seriously?” Clint asked, “I thought you were being dramatic. You didn’t see half the signs coming out of the airport?”

“Well, I did almost get blown up yesterday. I wasn’t at my best.”

Mentioning why they were out there to begin with kind of punctured the lighter atmosphere they’d built up since last night. Clint shifted in his seat a little and Darcy almost thought he still wasn’t going to giver her an answer.

“We’re in Iowa,” he said, eyes focused on the empty road, and they settled into silence for miles.  

Iowa made sense now, to look at it. She’d never been before, and didn’t know much about it, apart from a few grade-school level jokes about corn. It certainly seemed to be the constant rolling farmland she’d have assumed, but it was far from unpleasant. Sunlight caught the tawny leaves still on a few bushes and the horizon was still smokey with the last of the cold mist, the temperature barely higher than the night before. Clint was focused on the road straight ahead. She wondered what drew him out here, to have a house all of his own in this place. Was it just the sheer distance between here and the world of the Avengers? Or had he been born here, or in another part of the state? She didn’t know anything about what kind of family Clint grew up in. Darcy knew she prattled on about her various eccentric relatives a fair amount, but it wasn’t the sort of thing Clint talked about.

His quiet mood finally lifted when Darcy arched herself around in her seat, trying to read the tiny, rusted signpost at a dusty intersection.

“Ooh, fuck! A road sign!”

He chewed his lip but Darcy could see the glint in his eyes betraying a smile.

“And, uh, what did the ooh-fuck road sign say?”

“It said Plainfield is way closer than Waverly. Why are we going this way? That other place is nearer.”

“Yeah, it’s also tiny,” he said with a pointed look, “We’re trying to stay inconspicuous here. So we don’t want a tiny little town, with no tourist traffic, where they’re more likely to remember the out-of-town chick with a busted lip. Besides, last time I checked that place had a bank and a post office and that’s about it.”

Darcy ran her tongue along the clotted scab, “So if we don’t want tiny, why are we out here in the first place?”

“We don’t want a big city either. Those have wi-fi and security cameras. Two things I have to keep you away from. We want something in between.”

As they drove on, and eventually coming into view of a more sizeable settlement, Darcy was forced to admit Clint had been right. Waverly was big enough to blend into, and still far enough out of the way to stay under the radar. She watched suburban houses with neat gardens turn into a wide avenue of stores and restaurants in low buildings. Clint pulled in for gas and Darcy leaned out of the window to pester him.

“How long are we out here for anyway?” she whined.

“If I don’t hear from the others after a week, I gotta call in.”

“I thought you said there wasn’t a phone?”

“No, I said you couldn’t call anyone. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a phone.”

She had assumed there wasn’t one. She’d not seen one in the house at all, not in any of the normal places houses had phones. Not even sockets where one might have previously been connected. And she’d figured it was pretty impossible to get signal out there anyway. Not unless you stood on top of that scary-looking barn. But then something in her brain went click. She turned back and thumped the back of her head against the seat.

“Oh my god, it’s in the death barn, isn’t it? Like a satellite phone or something.”

Clint snorted and looked at her disbelievingly, _“death barn?”_

“What? Have you seen that thing? You cannot expect me to believe no-one’s been murdered in there.”

“Whatever you say, Chickadee.”

Gas paid for, and light teasing over with - _“What is that, my Avenger name?”, “It is now.”_ \- they headed across the bridge to a nearby supermarket. Clint chose a spot in the middle, with a clear route to the exit, and parked up. The lot was fairly busy, mostly retirees and mothers with very small children. People who did this every week, and weren’t concerned about who might be looking for them, who probably didn’t feel the need to _have a gun stuffed down the back of their jeans_. Darcy contained a little squeak at the sight of Clint’s handgun peeking out from under his jacket as he got out of the car. Was Iowa an open carry state? She didn’t know. She’d google it, except for the fact there was still an embargo on using her phone.

“There’s plenty of aisles we can skip, we can make it a pretty in-and-out job,” Clint said, striding into the store. Darcy followed at a more sedate pace, pushing the cart.

“Whatever you say, Hawkguy,” she said, mockingly. She plucked out of her pocket the list she’d made on the back of an envelope. Clint boggled a bit at the length of it, her scribbles covered both sides of the envelope in fairly small writing.

“Are you looking to feed the whole town or something?” he quizzed.

“Well, what am I supposed to do all week? Sit around and watch you doing target practice on a hay bale? I wanna bake some shit.”

So they sauntered through the store, picking up this and that. She got extras of a lot of things: milk, butter, eggs. And a fair amount of culinary basics: herbs and spices. When Clint had said ‘there’s no food’, he really meant it. She was essentially filling a kitchen from naught. It took up a lot of time and he was only mollified by the promise of getting to eat home-cooked meals. Cheesecake, cookies, and pumpkin pie. Mac and cheese, soup, and cornbread all made from scratch. She had _plans_ for that kitchen.

“I feel like I’ve gained two pounds just looking at all this,” Clint muttered as he unloaded their shopping onto the conveyor belt.

“Pff, you’re going to put on way more than two pounds eating it,” Darcy quipped under her breath, and he didn’t seem to hear it. They finished up and paid - Clint winced at the total - and loaded everything back into the car. Darcy also made sure to herd him towards the Walgreens, since she hadn’t been kidding about the tampon thing and there was a sore lack of basics. Like a replacement for that ancient tube of toothpaste for starters.

They passed an elderly man sitting on a bench and if Clint paid him any mind he was subtle enough about it to go unnoticed. Darcy, on the other hand, openly gaped at the front of the man’s newspaper which depicted Stark Tower with smoke pouring out of the window on her lab’s level. There was a title about suspected terrorism that Darcy didn’t get the chance to fully read as she and Clint strolled in through the doors.

Darcy tried to stay calm: Of course it was news, it had been a postal bomb in Iron Man’s tower. But that didn’t mean her name would be in there at all, let alone her picture. Their research was so obscure that the article probably didn’t even mention Jane. There was no way Tony or Pepper would let that kind of information get into the press. There was no reason for an old man doing the crossword to see her as anything other than someone passing through. She dearly hoped that Clint wouldn’t get recognised like some of the others. But since the lab explosion _was_ news, no doubt her mother would hear of it. And her mother would definitely freak out. There were probably already a great deal of messages from her family and friends, wanting to know if she was alright. And Darcy couldn’t say a damn word to them. Her phone was right there, doing nothing but weighing down her pocket.

There were other people throughout the store, happily tapping away at their own phones without a care in the world. If only she could get a hold of one, to send a message or even just let people know she’d seen the messages. Facebook did that. But she had a snowball’s chance in hell of Clint not noticing that. Maybe… maybe she could just get onto the in-store wifi herself, just to look. It surely couldn’t hurt? She’d watched Clint pay for everything with a credit card; the gas, the groceries and probably all this stuff too. She told herself that that had to be way more trackable that her using the internet. She’d put her phone in flight mode and stick to wifi. Reply to nothing, post nothing. She’d just check her private messages and be done.

So while Clint was picking out a new toothbrush, she slipped her phone out and turned it on. She kept it in her pocket and occasionally brought it out when he looked the other way, as if she were simply checking the time. There were indeed quite a few concerned queries from her aunt and cousins so the vibrate setting buzzed a little, but he failed to notice and went on paying for this round of shopping. He grabbed their bags and headed out, while she hung back to check her inbox since she figured the signal wouldn’t go far past the door. Her slow walk stuttered to a halt as she saw an email from Jane. It said something about being fine, holed up in Oklahoma, but it didn’t really read like Jane at all. It was too lilting and conversational. Jane preferred to be blunt in emails, almost to the point of sounding like a telegram. She was so focused on the - probably bogus - email that she didn’t notice that Clint had completely rumbled her game and didn’t get any time to react.

“What the hell are you doing?” he spat, grabbing the phone out of her hand. She tried to placate him, that it was only the wifi, but he ignored her. He practically ripped the back casing off and took out the battery and the sim. All the separate bits went in his jacket pocket and he took Darcy firmly by the arm and started pulling her towards the car.

“Clint, let go,” she pleaded, to no avail. His grip wasn’t exactly painful but uncomfortable, and the lack of choice he was giving her as he pulled her along made her twitch.

“Do you have any idea how stupid that was? You think they can’t track that, even just the internet? I _told_ you to keep the damn thing off!”

“You’re the one who’s been using his freakin’ credit card all day!” she hissed, trying to wrench her arm free.  He pulled her around so they were face to face, intimately close in any other context than the fight that everyone else in the parking lot no doubt saw they were having.

“Don’t be that naïve. Do you actually think it’s _my_ card? That thing goes through about a thousand proxies before it gets anywhere near the decoy bank account. _Maybe_ I actually know how to cover my own tracks.”

“Okay, fine!” she said finally yanking her arm free, “I’m sorry. Can I have my phone back?”

Clint looked like he was counting to ten in his head and obviously felt the stares of the people around them, so he gruffly told her to get back in the car and slung the last of their shopping in the back seat. As she put on her seatbelt, Darcy caught a glimpse of her reflection in the wing mirror. The cuts and bruises were more visible than ever, and she looked pale and tired from the less than stellar quality of sleep. She thought of Jane, who frequently went without much sleep, and thought that - wherever she really was - her friend probably wasn’t having to deal with a controlling secret agent who had yo-yo mood swings. Clint was being so weird. She could have put it down to this being his job, and you didn’t get to be an Avenger if you didn’t take your job seriously, but it was like walking on eggshells in snowshoes. Just when she thought he had relaxed enough to give her a little leeway, she’d screw up and he’d be angry at her all over again.

As Clint drove them back out of town, Darcy fidgeted in her seat. Being dragged around by her upper arm had irritated the bruise on her shoulder and it throbbed. She dreaded to think how much worse it was, compared to last night. She also realised, her eyes flicking back to her scuffed up face in the mirror, that the residents of Waverly probably didn’t see assassins bickering with lab assistants much and that they must have looked like a couple having a spat. With Darcy’s noticeable injuries, it was small wonder they stared and whispered to each other.

“Those old ladies at the bus stop probably think you’re beating me up,” she said, offhandedly. Her seatbelt knocked the wind out of her as Clint suddenly stood on the brake and skidded the car to a halt at the side of the road.

“Do you think that’s funny!?” he yelled, “Do you think this is a game?! Darcy, you could have _died_ yesterday. Someone tried to kill you! Do you want them to just follow you all across the country until they get you? Is that what you want?”

“No,” she said timidly, “but the-

“No-one was supposed to know you guys were even in the Tower. They had the lab number, the floor, and Foster’s name right on that box. That was need-to-know, in a high security building, and they _still_ managed to incinerate your lab. You might be blasé about that, but I sure as hell am not. I will do whatever it takes to make sure they don’t get a second chance. So I don’t give _a fuck_ what the Saturday Night Bridge Club thinks of us. Staying safe is the only thing that’s important right now and you do _not_ get to throw that out the window because you want to check your fucking facebook! Do you understand me?”

She nodded, shrinking in on herself. He let out a gruff sigh and pulled the car back onto the road, the tyres churning up the dirt. The cut on her lip had split open again. Darcy did her best not to make any noise as she began to cry. Hot tears dripped steadily down her cheeks but she didn’t dare wipe them away, for fear he’d yell at her for that too. But he wasn’t wrong. Clint had screamed all the things she’d been turning away from and ignoring, hoping that if she didn’t acknowledge it, it would go away. She’d gotten so used to the idea that it was Jane’s research, and Jane’s alone. She’d taken the fact that her input had been largely administrative to mean the fallout of their work would pass her by. But this was not proving to be true.

“Why would they even want me? I don’t actually understand half the stuff anyway,” she hiccupped, meek and fragile.

“Yeah, that’s why you’re not on a military base right now. Or in the Arctic with a Norse God,” he replied, still pissed but with less steam, “Yes, whoever it is will mark Foster and Selvig first. But if they fail there, they’ll settle for you. Because you archive all the research. You run the programmes. You label the fucking boxes of paperwork. If they want to slow Foster down, they’ll take out her support structure. You.”

Darcy didn’t respond, doing her best to suppress her sobs but unable to stop. She stared out the window, cornfields rolling by and houses becoming fewer and further between. Without saying a word Clint stayed surly and hostile, probably rightly, all the way… not home. Not to Darcy. It could never be home, because of the circumstances that brought her here. No matter how many cosy blankets there were, no matter what she happened to bake, the only thing that house would ever be was a hideaway. There was no moment she was not in danger and all the more for having alerted a phone network to her whereabouts. And she was putting Clint in danger just being next to him. Had he even volunteered for this, or had he been given her as a duty? Had Thor bargained with him, had Steve ordered him to take a silly girl, in way over her head, into his house for safekeeping? And now he was likely regretting all of it.

Clint stopped the car roughly on the driveway and Darcy gave no hint of protest or query as he checked the perimeter again. He curtly told her to go inside and stay there, so she hurried in and upstairs to her room. She still cried as quietly as possible, even though Clint would not hear her as he took in the shopping. He left her alone all through lunch and most of the afternoon. He didn’t venture upstairs at all and spend the day outside, first in the barn then letting out his frustration by firing arrows into every tree within sight of the house.

Darcy tried her best never to leave the safety, if it could be called that, of her bedroom. She used the upstairs bathroom and raided the office for something to read. It was hardly a treasure trove of literature and she ended up disinterestedly flipping through a book on the history of US Special Operations, skipping to the meagre sections of photographs most of which dated to World War Two. The picture of 1944 Steve looking stern and focused reminded her of the equally stern and focused agent that was still mad at her outside, so she gave up and flung the book down on the bed.  At that point she could no longer ignore the throbbing in her shoulder and prised up her shirt sleeve to inspect it. The bruise had spread, deep red and purple, and was firm to the touch and angrily painful.

She had no painkillers in her bag and did not like to go asking Clint for any if he was still in a rough temper. One which he had every right to be in, she thought guiltily. He’d stayed outside all day so Darcy would risk creeping downstairs to look for an ice pack and scurry back.

But, of course, when Darcy had the ice pack hastily wrapped in a dishcloth and sighed at the cold relief, Clint chose that moment to swing the back door open, bow in hand, before Darcy could go back to hiding. Concern flashed through his expression at the sight of her holding the pack to her shoulder, the bruise badly obvious. He’d lost all the anger from before and just looked weary as he set the bow on the kitchen counter and rubbed his hand over his face. Approaching her slowly, he wordlessly took the icepack and towel from her and rewrapped it, neater, and held it on to her shoulder. His touch was delicate and he kept his head low.

“Darcy, I’m sorry,” he mumbled hoarsely.

She gave a heavy sigh, exhausted emotionally rather than physically, “I’m the one who should be sorry, Clint-”

“I lost my temper,” he admitted, “And I never should have dragged you around like that. I promise I won’t do it again.”

“We both screwed up. I promise I’ll take it more seriously from now on, okay?”

He gave a little smile and a soft nod of his head. They stood as close now as they had when they fought, she could smell on him the clean scent of cold, fresh air.  

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he whispered. Clint looked at her, intensely earnest, imploring her to see all the things he couldn’t say. He cared about her, and didn’t want the life-threatening shit he dealt with all the time to be anywhere near her. But it was, and he was trying to keep her alive and whole as best he could.

Just as she was tempted to reach up and stroke his cheek, Darcy heard her own stomach growl like a lap dog kept in a handbag. She had skipped lunch, and breakfast had left a lot to be desired.

“Maybe I’ll start dinner early,” she said, drawing back from him somewhat embarrassed. Clint smiled and watched as she dug out ingredients to make macaroni and cheese.

“You need any help?” he asked.

Probably not, was the answer, unless he kept his saucepans in the top cupboard, “You can do the dishes. And get me a coke maybe?”

He huffed mirthfully and trudged over to get a couple of cans from the fridge, then set about watching her cook with occasional employment as ‘reacher of high shelves.’ Dinner was met with high praise and Clint accused her of holding out on them, why did she not cook like this back at the tower? Darcy _did_ , in fact, cook at the tower, only Thor was not one for leaving leftovers and she teased Clint that it wasn’t her fault if he was too slow to beat the God of Thunder to the table.

In the evening Darcy spent a while hooking the shiny new dvd player up to the rather dated tv in the living room; there were stacks of dvds lying on the floor next to it, most of which had not even been taken out of their cellophane wrappers. Clint mumbled something about how people kept giving them to him but he’d not taken much of his vacation time over the years and never got around to watching them. There was a big new sofa hidden under a protective dust sheet - far superior to the old loveseat that was being used as storage spot for DIY materials - so the two of them flopped down onto it and opened a box set of M*A*S*H. They made it through eight episodes, and a lot of chips, before Darcy started falling asleep on Clint’s shoulder and he sent her up to bed. Yet again, she seemed to sleep easily and comfortably.

Darcy heard but did not feel herself shout and she woke with an overwhelming tension, every cell in her body telling her she was in imminent danger. The room was dark but seemed to be the way she’d left it, there was no obvious reason to be afraid. But her spine and shoulders were paralyzed with fear, like she’d been electrocuted. She felt like there had to be something right behind her, and if she moved it would kill her.

She felt stiff and heavy on her side, and wanted badly to lie on her back, but her body did not want to move. She could not remember quite what she had dreamt of, just that wherever she turned there was fire and smoke and noise, and now that she was awake she feared that rolling over would start everything over again. The panic burning in her chest was quashed when she heard the hurried rustle of bedsheets from across the hall. Clint.

The room was flooded with light as Clint opened the door, “Darcy?”

She turned and sat up, the nightmare and its lingering dread banished by the brightness. She must have looked shaken because he came forward without waiting for an answer to sit on the bed and curve an arm around her shoulders.

“You okay? I heard you yell,” he asked.

“Just a dream,” she whispered back.

He pulled her closer into a hug and rested his head on hers. She tucked her face in to his neck, feeling very heavy and tired. He needed a shave and the stubble scratched a little, but she didn’t care. The remnants of her nightmare that lingered were held back to the edges of her brain with Clint near her, with the touch of his skin.

“You want me to stay with you?” he asked somewhat tentatively.

She frowned, the frightened part of her brain thought that the dark fear would get hold of her as soon as the lights went out, only this time it would take Clint too. But to tell him no sounded like the worst idea in the world when she felt so much safer right next to him. He rubbed her back and the words spilled out of her before she could filter them.

“Can I come in with you instead?”

She knew that there was no difference between the darkness in Clint’s room and hers, but the rest of her would settle for nothing else. She thought she must have sounded pathetic and ducked her head.  He didn’t hesitate to agree and did not break physical contact - reduced though it was to his hand on her back - as they left Darcy’s room and crossed the hall. Clint’s room was bigger than hers, with dark walls and light carpet, and a warm light glowed from the bedside lamp. He steered her to the side of the bed furthest from the door and she wriggled under the thick, still warm duvet. He crawled in beside her and she cuddled straight back up to his chest.

“Your feet are freezing,” he mumbled into her hair but it deterred her not one bit. She was warm and tired enough to override any noise her brain might make, and she fell asleep almost as soon as Clint switched off the light.

She woke when Clint checked on her around mid-morning, with a headache that clearly wanted to kill her. It was like someone was forcing a hot cannonball through the side of her brain. Once she managed to haul herself out of bed, she sat in a vacant stupor while Clint made breakfast. He wasn’t the best cook in the world - the smoke alarm went off twice before the bacon was done - but his heart was in it. He watched with a concerned and apologetic look in his eyes as she chewed through his attempt at an omelette. She’d forgone coffee, favouring orange juice so as not to make her headache worse, and picked slowly at her food.

“I guess maybe you’re not up to it today, but, uh, I dug out a couple of things for you to bake with,” Clint offered, taking her plate after she’d called it quits, “They came with the house, so I don’t know how old they are, but I gave them a good wash.”

He grabbed a couple of tarnished cake tins and cupcake trays out from the cupboard and set them down on the counter, “They’re there, if you feel like it.”

They certainly looked well-used, beyond being older than Darcy and more like being older than Clint. It was hard to tell even what colour they had been when they were new. But they seemed sturdy enough, and had indeed been scrubbed clean. She hadn’t really planned on baking anything that day, hadn’t really gotten past the idea of breakfast, but it sounded like a better plan than sitting around thinking about all the things she hadn’t wanted to experience this week: the lab, their fight, her nightmare. If she drank plenty water and distracted herself, maybe her thoughts would weigh less in her head.

“Thanks, Clint,” she said softly, “Wanna help?”

“Nah, I was gonna go do some target practice on a hay bale,” he said with a smirk, “Let me know when I can lick the bowl.”

He pulled on his jacket and headed out back, telling her he’d be in the field that stretched out from the yard. With a gentle click of the back door, he was gone. Nearby, but Darcy was still alone in the house. Without Clint right there, it felt decidedly like a strange place in which she shouldn’t go wandering. But that was an awful lot like _thinking_ so she pulled out the flour and milk and eggs and got to it.

She was definitely making cake, but she also wanted custard. They hadn’t bought any and her brain protested a little at being asked to remember how to make her own. But it was in there somewhere, Gran had taught her how. Darcy’s mother had worked long hours, and baking was something she had shared with her grandmother. It kept little Darcy occupied and the house full of nice things to eat. It had left her with an unshakable weakness for cakes and pies that neither Darcy’s mother nor her dentist had particularly approved of. But it was part of her, it kept Jane and Erik in good spirits, and now it would keep grown-up Darcy occupied too.

It was lunchtime by the time the cake was done and cooled; raspberry and custard cake of which Clint wolfed down a large helping, making a positively wicked noise that Darcy had hoped to hear under very different circumstances. She filed the memory of it away in the back of her mind, and took Clint unsubtly asking if cake was all that was on today’s menu as her cue to keep right on going. She threw together a big plate of nachos for lunch, and made cheesecake and cornbread for later.

It snowed in the afternoon, which made Clint grumble liberally about having to constantly clear pathways to and from the house, and scraping all the snow and ice from the car. Both were necessary though, he insisted. The car would be vital if they needed to high-tail it out of there without time to defrost the thing. And used paths would help disguise their tracks if they needed to escape on foot. Darcy could not think of a worse case scenario than having to run out into the snow in the middle of nowhere, though Clint assured her it was very much a last resort. With chicken marinating for dinner, Darcy put crumbs out for her chickadees and then sat on the front porch, wrapped in a duvet and drinking hot chocolate, while Clint dug the car out.

She whiled away a couple of days baking, and borrowing more of Clint’s wardrobe. She hadn’t packed for the cold weather and his over-large sweaters and sweatpants were excellent comfort. The hoodie smelled more like her now, and less of him. Part of her wanted to say that if it smelled like her then it must be hers, and keep it. But another part wanted to make him wear it for a day so she could smell him again when she took it back. It gave her butterflies in her stomach to think of admitting that, so she didn’t mention it. Even when she saw Clint’s gaze heat up when she wandered through the house in his clothes.

They disagreed on a few things. Like the setting on the toaster - Clint liked his toast toasted, while what Darcy liked amounted to hot bread - and whether or not the barn had actually been the setting for multiple horrific deaths, _“not unless swathes of innocent chickens count, no.”_

Clint checked the comms system in the barn several times a day and would usually return pensive and frowning. Darcy didn’t know if that meant there were no messages or a slew of them, full of grim and gory detail about the people who’d blown up their lab. Either way it resulted in at least an hour of Darcy keeping to herself while Clint sorted things out in his head. The matter of her looking up her email wasn’t mentioned, and she was not going to ask.

At first, she wanted to leave him to brood into his coffee and go be nosy. She’d tried tidying the office first but she’d had to stop herself when confronted with the mountains of paperwork - years of censored black-ops bureaucracy - in case she got into things she wasn’t comfortable knowing about. Then she’d found twelve hundred dollars rolled up in his sock drawer, so she quickly slammed the drawer shut and just went to dog-ear all his books instead. She found a couple of recipe books, dusty but otherwise as good as new, like they’d never even been opened. They leaned more towards the ‘thirty minute meals’ and ‘four ingredient recipe’ side of cooking, and when she cracked open one of the covers it read, _‘Merry Christmas 2008, from Phil.’_

She selected one that contained nice dressings for salad, and moved it into the kitchen to start dinner. Through the window she saw Clint trudging back from checking the barn again, making unhappy shivering motions at the cold outside. The temperature had never really lifted since they’d arrived and Clint was spending a lot of time outdoors, from target practice to keeping the car at optimal ‘getaway’ standards. And, as he went to grab one of his bows stashed in the dining room, it didn’t look like he was going to give it a rest any time soon, even though there were now large icicles hanging from the gutters and the snow was still piled up around the house.

“Aren’t you freezing out there all the time?” she asked.

“A bit,” he conceded. She tried to convince him to stay indoors for while, not least because she didn’t enjoy being by herself that much. But there was also a nagging sense that she should at least attempt to have his well-being in mind,  even if not in the way he had for her.

“I don’t see what good it’ll do if your fingers all get frostbite,” she chided as she poured two mugs of coffee, so he would stay in a little longer. She’d never known him to turn it down.

“It’s good to get used to my environment -  Hydra agents aren’t gonna give me five to find my mittens,” he said.

Darcy missed a beat before she asked, “Is that who it was, then? Hydra blew up the lab?”

Clint looked wary and she suspected he wasn’t supposed to have told her that, at least not in such a blasé manner.

“You can’t tell me,” she said flatly, leaning her hip on the counter.

“Probably not but I don’t actually think the ‘ignorance is bliss’ thing works for you,” he teased, mimicking her position, “At first glance, no, it doesn’t look like Hydra. It was small scale, focusing on one part of the building rather than the whole thing. If Hydra could get explosives into Stark Tower, why bother just going for the lab? And it didn’t do all that much damage, considering. It sent two security guards to the hospital - who will be fine - and it gave a couple of dozen more scrapes and bruises. But that doesn’t mean they’re off the table completely. It could have been a first run to test out Stark’s defences. How long before it got detected? How close could it get to its target?”

Pretty darn close, mail flew in and out of the tower constantly, so no-one else paid it any mind and the only reason it had been noticed at all was that they managed to pick the one week when Darcy and Jane weren’t waiting on parts.

“And like I said before, no-one was supposed to know you guys were working there,” he continued, “so they didn’t just pick a random name off payroll. There’s not a huge list of people who know about or understand the ramifications of your work, so unless you and Jane pissed off somebody we don’t know about-”

“Well, I did mess up her date with that guy, and I think we scarred our London intern for life,” Darcy winced.

“They’re clean, we checked,” he said with a quelling look, “so that brings us back to Hydra. They’re the ones with the inclination to try and scare Foster off her research. The ones with the surveillance and tracking resources to find you guys. But we still don’t know for sure.”

Guilt flared in her at the memory of naively turning on her phone, and the resultant reprimand, “so I guess the chances of tracing the postage back are pretty slim?”

“Like there was anything left to trace,” he shrugged, “the whole outer packaging was vapourized. We know it came USPS but so does-”

“Tonnes of other shit, yeah” she finished with a sigh, looking down into her coffee.

“Hey,” Clint cupped her cheek in his hand and turned her to look at him, “I promised to keep you safe, didn’t I? They’re not going to hurt you.”

“Yeah,” she smiled weakly, “Thank you for telling me that stuff.”

He smiled warmly back and stroked her cheek with his thumb. He admitted defeat and agreed to stay inside and help with dinner. They made pizza from scratch and Darcy let out an appalled groan when Clint expressed a mild appreciation for deep dish style - _“how can you like that? It’s basically a pie”, “You say that like it’s a bad thing”_ \- but he wasn’t so picky as to deny her her choice of crust. They made cookies in the evening, cutting out shapes by hand owing to the lack of cutters. Darcy stuck to geometric shapes for simplicity but Clint was ambitious and tried to cut one out in the shape of a dog. It didn’t seem terrible until the deformed result once it was baked had Darcy in stitches. She decided they couldn’t eat that one and it was propped up on the kitchen window sill for posterity. Clint was delegated dish-washing duty while Darcy ate the fruits of their labour. She heard a heavy sigh and looked over to see fat snowflakes starting to billow in the wind outside. She walked up behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder.

“More snow,” she said. Clint merely grunted.

Darcy swapped with him and took over cleaning, while Clint trudged out to the barn to check for messages again.  He was out there much longer than usual and by the time he came back -  in an even more obviously serious mood - Darcy was sitting watching the snow fall in a spotless kitchen. He seemed so desperately solemn and she was not so foolish to think it did not involve her.

“Clint?”

He seemed not to know how to start, picking up a cookie and turning it over in hand, “The research station Jane and Thor are at was attacked.”

“They’re fine!” he added hastily at Darcy’s stricken expression, “Totally fine. And it gives us more leads to work on so, you know, it’s not… terrible.”

She blinked back tears, telling herself that Jane was surely fine if Thor was near, and wished she could just go outside and bury herself completely in the snow. She hated the nervous anxiety that flooded her whenever this stuff reared its head. She hated that she was still falling back into the same trap of ignoring her problems and hoping they’d go away. But what could she do about any of it, tucked all the way out here? Clint kept reaffirming that he wasn’t going to let her come to any harm, which did not keep her from worrying but made her want to stick to him like glue.

She took a deep, steadying breath, “Okay, how does it help us exactly? Just talk so I don’t have to think so much.”

“Uh, well they left some gear behind. Weapons, cell phones, logistics information. We’d have liked to have someone to interrogate but, uh, Thor doesn’t really take prisoners. And that mountain now has a couple of gouges in it that I’m pretty sure the locals are going to notice. But no injuries on our side. So it turned out not bad.”

“Are they staying there? Jane and Thor, I mean?”

“No, they have to move again. Natasha wouldn’t tell me where,” he said and rubbed his hand over her upper arm. She winced when he hit the edge of her bruise and retracted his hand like lightning, “Sorry!”

She half-heartedly whacked his arm and he skedaddled off out into the hall, only to reappear looking for a place to stash a pistol. Darcy watched in silent curiosity as he selected a very worn and stained oven glove that was hanging up on the wall and stuffed the gun inside it.

He fixed her with his best poker face and said, “Don’t use this one for cakes and stuff, yeah?”

Darcy let out a snort of laughter. She should probably have fretted more about the need to have firearms hidden throughout the house, and the increased likelihood of having to use them, but she just shook her head and headed upstairs to bed.

So far, every morning Darcy woke up with Clint either right there next to her or making enough noise elsewhere for her to feel safe. But the longer they stayed, the later she slept and the next day, with the sun well and truly risen, her eyes shot open with the sensation that the house was just far too quiet. She sat up, still cocooned in Clint’s duvet, and listened hard.

Nothing.

Really nothing. Not even the rattling of the barn door outside.

Surely he would not have gone anywhere, not without letting her know. Had he assumed he would be back before she woke up and got waylaid? Or was he tied up in the barn being beaten senseless by Hydra agents, who were just waiting for her to come downstairs thinking everything’s normal so they can put a bag over her head? Even in the middle of telling herself how ridiculous that sounded, she thought of the gun stuffed in the kitchen and how it seemed so very far away. She didn’t know where Clint had hidden any others.

There was still no noise, save the chirping of birds, so Darcy got up out of bed as quietly as she could, taking cautious steps out onto the upstairs landing. Every so often she paused, to listen for any movement, any sign of Clint or anyone else. Every time she heard nothing, the paranoia grew slightly worse. She crept down the stairs, mindful of the squeaky floorboard, wondering what she could possibly do if she found anyone other than Hawkeye in the house.

The downstairs bathroom door was wide open. She peeked into the kitchen and found it empty, though Clint’s boots were not sitting by the back door, nor was his jacket. She tried not to panic, she just had no idea where Clint would have gone to. As much as she wanted to calm down and just wait for him, something in her head needed her to find him. Although it was probably the same part of her head that had given her nightmares, she obeyed it anyway. She marched through the hall, looking into the dining room and living room as she passed. She bolted out the front door only to almost run straight into Clint sitting on the porch step. He spun round, yanking a mug of coffee away from his mouth and looking at her with startled concern.

“Darce, what’s wrong?”

Her brain came to as sudden a stop as the rest of her, like when you forgot why you went into a room. Clint was right there, in front of her. He was just taking a break before he scraped the snow off the car. He was safe, they were safe.

The snow was deep now around the house. Clint had dug out tunnels from the front to the back and one to the barn but, away from the property boundaries, the fields were now blanketed in pristine white snow, like a thick layer of fondant icing. It was beautiful. Untouched, save for the tracks made by a single car that must have driven past.

“Darcy?” Clint’s voice was grave with worry, since she hadn’t answered him, and she felt his fingers tentatively graze her arms. She snapped back to reality and noticed she was shivering in the frigid air.

“Did you have another nightmare?” Clint asked, standing in front of her and staring anxiously.

“No. I… I just, I didn’t know where you were and,” she gasped. Her throat tightened like she might cry again and she took a deep breath of cold air that burned her lungs, “I couldn’t hear you and, and… I don’t know.”

Clint opened his arms towards her, and she flung herself into a hug. She held him so tight she thought he would surely tap out for breath. His hands were cold as they petted her hair, but Darcy felt the heat he was giving off under his clothes. She _hadn’t_ had a nightmare, she couldn’t understand why she was feeling like this. But Clint was keeping her safe, both physically and emotionally, from the malignant shadow of Hydra. Under his jacket she felt straps of some kind and realised that he was still carrying at least one weapon. She pulled back a little to look at him, still so close that she felt how cold his nose was as it brushed hers.

“That gun you put in the kitchen?” she started, “I don’t know the first thing about guns. Do you need me to learn how to… shoot it?”

“Do _you_ want to learn?”

“Not especially,” she admitted. Her taser had been plenty strong enough in New Mexico, not that she was carrying it around the house like he was.

“Then you don’t need to. You shouldn’t have to know how to fire a gun, Darcy. It’s my job to do that kind of stuff, okay?” he affirmed, stroking her back. She nodded and sighed deeply, shedding a lot of her agitation.

“Can I try with the bow?” she asked, shakily giving him as close to a puppy face she could manage.

“Not a chance, Chickadee,” he said warmly and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He looked at her  in anticipation, his eyes dipping down to her mouth before he pulled back hastily, “Come on, Darce, I’ll make you breakfast.”

He slid out from her arms and turned to go back inside. She didn’t immediately follow, her mind spinning a little from what almost happened, and he turned to face her, fretting that even so innocent a kiss as that had been overstepping the mark. He looked like he was going to start apologizing, which Darcy really did not want him to do, so she stepped inside and took his hand to lead him through to the kitchen.

“How about we give the fire department a rest and _I_ make breakfast?” she quipped.

Eventually, after breakfast and much pleading and threatening not to bake anymore, she did get to hold the bow but with no arrows. It was light enough, but the draw was insane. She struggled to hold it, even halfway drawn, and she thought it would sooner slice through her fingers like cheese wire than fire an arrow. Clint chuckled and stood behind her, steadying her arm holding the frame and helping her draw back fully. She felt the muscles in his arm flexing and stretching, and her blood rushed a little faster. She leaned back into him when he spoke gently into her ear, giving her instructions about stance that she was only half listening to. His breath tickled the skin on her neck until he thought twice of it and brought their lesson to a swift end.

Later Clint decreed he had a ‘project’ for the two of them. He’d left her to her own devices thus far and she was taken by surprise, eyebrows raising at the thought that he’d changed his mind about teaching her to shoot. She deflated dramatically when Clint presented her with several rolls of wallpaper intended for the living room that, judging by the dust caked on them, had been sitting idle for some time.

“You do the low bits, I’ll do the high bits,” he said, as if it were meant to be appealing.

She looked at him skeptically - he was taller than her but not dramatically so, like Steve or Thor - but grabbed the first roll and muttered, “you’re still gonna need a step ladder.”

Darcy’s DIY skills were not as sharply honed as her cooking, and no better than Clint’s.  It was close to dinner time when they finished the whole room, having had plenty coffee breaks and more than enough screw ups. There were several sections of wallpaper left with gaps, but the paper was light. If it wasn’t noticeable from the other side of the room, they counted it as a win.

“So this guy I went to college with, Jimmy,” she chattered as they dumped the scraps of leftover wallpaper on the old couch, “he runs this Avengers fan blog. He was on campus when Bruce rolled through it, and the army and everything. His brother’s in the Air Force, I think, they gush over superheroes together. It’s his thing.”

“Uh-huh?” Clint said expectantly.

“Sooooo, I bet he’d be totally jealous if I sent him a picture of me putting up wallpaper with Hawkeye.”

“Nope,” he shook his head.

“Aw, c’mon. I wouldn’t send it to him right now, I’ll wait a couple of weeks after this whole thing is over. He’s had pictures of everybody but you. Even Natasha at her hearing. He never has pictures of you.

“Maybe that’s the way I want it, Chickadee,” he said.

“Spoilsport,” she humphed, poking him in the stomach a couple of times. He caught her hand in his and looked at her tenderly, with a dorky smile. Leaning in, his eyes flitted down to her mouth, and he went so far as to lick his lips. But he got that pessimistic, dejected look once more and pulled away, letting their hands slip apart, and crossing the room to start folding away the table they’d been using to brush on the paste. It was becoming unbearable, how he would pull the plug every time they got too close. But it seemed like Clint was always the one to get them that far in the first place.

“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked, making him freeze on the spot and look at her, “You didn’t think I’d notice? I may not be an assassin but I’m not that oblivious. Every time you seem like you wanna tell me you’re interested, you run away. I keep trying to tell you that, hell yeah, it’s reciprocated, so I don’t know what the problem is. I don’t know what it is you think you’re saving either of us from.”

“Darcy…” he sighed and leaned back against the table, surely making a mess of his jeans.

“All this?” he said, gesturing to the house around them, “I never planned on any of this. Ever. When I was your age, I didn’t even really plan on living this long, never mind having a house and someone to share it with. There’s plenty of people who wouldn’t believe you if you told them Clint Barton was most of the way through his thirties.”

“I just… always seems like as soon as I get close t-” he hesitated, “to having something good, some other shit blows up or falls out of the sky to take it all away from me.”

None of what he’d just said came as a revelation. Clint definitely came across as ‘the Man with only the Barest Hint of a Plan.’ And Darcy could understand how a job like his - a life like his - would foster that kind of outlook, not trying to make a future for yourself, being scared of how much it would hurt when the world took things away. She’d always dreaded the moment when someone realised she really didn’t belong in the vicinity of superheroes and secret agents and sent her back to her old life. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to engage with the world she lived in now, explosions aside. She clung onto her role with Jane, even though it fell far short of what her family had surely expected of her. Jane and Erik and Thor, and the boundaries of research they crashed through, were ‘something good’ and she wouldn’t change a thing about any of it. Clint could be part of that too. He already was, but could be so much more.

“Well, seems to me like stuff blows up anyway,” she offered and reached out to gently take his hand. She watched their linked fingers, his broad and weathered and hers tapered and soft. He squeezed her hand and brought his face close to hers, “so you might as well grab the good while it’s here.”

“Darce,” he whispered. When she looked up into his eyes, she found them still immersed in reflection, still second-guessing himself.

She tentatively touched her lips to his, steadily increasing the pressure as he kissed her back. She pulled back just a little, but he cupped the back of her head in his warm hand and brought her back for more. He was gentle but aching to hold on to her, fearing that if he let go she would fall away from him like sand through his fingers.

She skimmed her hands over his stomach and around his waist, and Clint wrapped her in his arms and pulled her tightly to him. They fit together seamlessly and it felt so right. Every time she broke away for breath, he would kiss her cheek, her neck, her jaw until she put her lips to his again. One of his hands crept further and further down until it cupped her backside, while the other stayed on her upper back. Darcy reached up to run both hands through his short hair, which garnered a throaty moan from him. He lifted her up by the thighs and spun them around to sit her on the table.

He stood between her legs and cupped the back of her skull in his hands while he kissed and nipped down her neck. She could feel his fingers catching in her hair where the wallpaper paste had gotten in it. And it wasn’t like she doubted the structural integrity of the table but, well, it wasn’t designed for these activities.

“Clint,” she breathed, “Clint, wait…”

He pulled his lips away from her skin but stayed close enough nuzzle her nose with his, like if he went too far away then none of it would be real.  There was so much heat in him, wherever she put her hands, it would be so tempting to touch more.

“I need a shower, and I’m pretty sure it’s big enough for two,” she said, running her fingers down his chest. Clint didn’t need to be told twice and took her enthusiastically by the hand towards the bathroom. He got the water running and went straight back to kissing her, his hands drifting up the hem of her shirt. Darcy was getting a bit sick of all his clothes too and, rather less restrained, tugged up his t-shirt

“Off,” she demanded.

The shirt was unceremoniously flung across the bathroom and Darcy put her hands all over his skin, while he worked on undoing his belt. When he bent to take off his pants, she pulled off her own t-shirt. The bruise on her shoulder was yellowing around the edges but still angrily obvious, as were a few scabbed over cuts on her arms. It probably wasn’t the sexiest look, and might have served as a cold reminder of how they’d gotten there, but Clint did not pay it much mind beyond avoiding her injuries with all but the lightest of touches. He kissed her again, hands lovingly caressing her waist. The tips of his fingers slid down the waistband of her sweats and he stilled.

“Still okay?” he checked.

Instead of answering, Darcy pushed her pants to the floor and wrapped her arms around him, breasts pushing up against his chest, to kiss him. His skin felt so good on hers, and she was reluctant to part from him even just a little. But pull away she did, stepping into the shower and earning a frustrated whine from Clint.

“Are we actually doing the bathing thing? Because that’s not where I thought this was going…” he pouted.

“Well, the faster I’m done, the faster we can get to where you wanna be,” she teased, soaking her hair through, “So how about you get in here and help me?”

He quickly climbed into the shower beside her, not the biggest space in the world but enough. He grabbed hold of the nearest shampoo bottle and squeezed out way more than Darcy needed to wash her hair. He brought his hand to her hair and began massaging and working her hair into a thick, bubbly lather which dripped down her back. It felt fantastic, sending shivers down her spine, but it soon became apparent he was not so interested in washing her hair as he was touching her in every way he could. His hands trailed downwards, reaching her neck and shoulders. Darcy tipped her head back under the spray of water while Clint ran his hands up and down her body, from her thighs and hips all the way up and around to her shoulder blades. He leaned down to kiss her neck and shoulders and, as far as he could get, to the top of her breasts. He reached around to squeeze her buttocks, his calloused fingers dipping to tease the inside of her thighs. She sighed and shuddered, feeling warm and tingly and slick. When she deemed her hair rinsed enough, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him hard.

He spun them to swap places, the water ran down over his head but he did not move to wash. He guided her around so she was facing the tiled wall while he tickled his fingers over the soft skin between her legs. She gasped when two fingers reached under to rub her clit, and his thumb toyed with the hint of wetness at her opening. She whined a little and pushed back so his fingers went deeper. Clint bent down and changed his angle, so that one hand reach around to play with her clit and the other’s fingers darted in and out of her in undulating rhythms. She felt his erection against her ass cheek and she wiggled her hips to give him some friction.

“Faster…” she panted when he slowed a little. He picked his pace right back up, his movements a touch rougher but it felt so damned good. Her muscles all tightened and she came with an almost desperate moan. Clint took his time, stringing her out until she was nothing but squeaks and whimpers, and gradually stopped and pulled away.

She turned to see him licking off his fingers with a wicked grin, and then he stepped back under the spray of the shower to wash his hair. She stood close to him, kissing his shoulder and skimming her hand down his front, with her nails grazing through the trail of hair downwards.  He gave a deep, appreciative moan when she lightly grasped his erection and started exploring which angles and rhythms got the best response.

“Darce, I’m not gonna last if you keep that up,” he said breathlessly.

She quirked an eyebrow, “Well, uh, I didn’t pack any condoms, did you?”

“No,” he said with a groan of realization. Darcy giggled a little at his pouty face and went back to kissing him, down his jaw and his neck while her hand stroked and squeezed and twisted. Her other hand wandered down his torso, grazing her nails over his chest and gently rubbing her fingers over his nipples. He gasped loudly and his hand shot out to steady himself against the wall, knocking over the shampoo bottles in the process. She tightened her grip and his hips jerked forward as he came. He was gorgeous like this, standing taut with his mouth hanging open in a silent exclamation.

They cleaned each other up and got bundled into clean, warm clothes, all the while peppering each other with kisses. Darcy made spaghetti and Clint would not stop following her around, his hands on her hips, kissing the back of her neck as she worked.

It was only after dinner, when they were sitting, sated and stuffed full at the kitchen table that Clint’s eyes started darting over to the window. When she got up to start on the dishes, he followed her to the counter. He wrapped her in a hug, tracing the shell of her ear with his lips, but he was tense and coiled like a spring. Something was wrong.

“Darce, I need you to go back into the bathroom, okay?” he whispered, nuzzling her neck, “Lock the door and stay there until I come get you. Me or Natasha.”

“Natasha’s n-”

“Promise?” he interrupted, still keeping up a ruse of cuddling her. His grip on her waist was tight and, for all the signals she was getting that something horrible was happening, she felt far safer in his arms than she thought she would be in the bathroom.  She whispered assent and slipped away from him and out into the hallway. Clint didn’t seem to move much, beyond pretending to take over the washing up and she felt like she was back in her nightmare; that if she looked around there would be smoke and fire and all manner of disaster.

Once the bathroom door was locked behind her, which didn’t lessen the anxiety any, Darcy slid to the floor, scrunching up the fuzzy mat with her feet. The steam from their shower had mostly dissipated but the room was still warm. The sounds of dishes being clinked together stopped and nothing replaced it. She’d become used to hearing Clint throughout the house but now she couldn’t hear anything over her own quickened breathing. She listened hard for a good while but could not hear a thing.

She jumped suddenly at a loud bang. Not a gunshot, more like something bursting. And it was followed by muffled thumps of someone moving through, presumably, the attic. Fear burned in her gut at the thought that it might not be Clint. Then there definitely was a gunshot upstairs, along with the shattering of glass, and she had to slap her hand over her mouth to cover the shriek.

All her nerves were on edge, there was no window in the bathroom - only a small vent in the top of one wall - and the brass lock on the door seemed so very flimsy. Clint had obviously put her in there so that no-one could sneak up on her from another direction but it also left her with no alternative means of escape. She did not doubt Hawkeye but fear ate away at her brain and she couldn’t help but dread what might happen to her if he failed.

She was sorely missing her taser, and scrambled as subtly as she could to find something, anything, to defend herself with, hoping that Clint had included the bathroom when he’d hidden weapons all over the place. The cabinet under the sink held a thin collection of useless items - toilet paper and bulk packs of soap bars - and Darcy struggled not to sob. But there was a shadow on the underside of the sink that caught her eye. There was a small pistol duct taped on to the cabinet, which she hastily ripped off and pointed at the door, scooting backwards until she was sandwiched in between the shower and the wall. The weapon didn’t really make her feel better; she hadn’t the first clue how to use it, or if it was even loaded.

There was a splintering crash as someone kicked in the front door. The instinct to run away screamed and writhed in her chest but there was nowhere to go. And she had promised Clint. She still couldn’t hear where he was. There was someone creeping down the hall and it felt like the only way to breathe quietly enough was to not breathe at all.

The floorboard creaked and instantly three shots fired in quick succession, followed by heavy thump. Darcy’s mouth hung open but she couldn’t pull in any air. She heard footsteps coming down the stairs, faint and cautious, but they bypassed her door and went further along towards the kitchen.

There was a pause where she could hear nothing but the blood rushing in her head.

Then a wet thunk followed by the scuffling of boots and grunts of pain and effort. She heard what she guessed to be guns clattering to the floor and a smash of something - or more like someone -  hitting the wall and dropping to the floor. Whoever was left huffed loudly and left the house for a while. She stayed stock still and faintly heard the barn door - she so dearly hoped it was Clint - being opened and closed. The gun was still clenched in her hands and her knuckles were starting to ache from having held on to it so tightly. She heard the back door open and someone kicking their boots against the step to get the snow off. She tried to force down the hope that it must be Clint; that might be exactly what someone else wanted her to think.

Footsteps came through the kitchen and into the hall, stopping just outside the bathroom door, and Darcy held the gun out in front of her with her arms locked out straight. Her hands shook uncontrollably and her fingers didn’t feel strong enough to pull the trigger. Her lungs screamed at having gone so long without a proper deep breath but she couldn’t physically take one in if she tried. There was gentle a tap at the door.

“Darcy?” Clint’s voice said, muffled through the wood.

She took a deep, gasping breath which must have sounded a little too much like a sob as Clint rapped on the door more insistently.

“Darce, it’s me. Can I come in?”

The gun thunked against the mat as she dropped it and hastily got up to unlock the door. She scooted backwards to hide behind the door as it slowly opened and Clint poked his head around it. His nose was bloodied and his expression hard. He shut and relocked the door behind him, and grabbed a small towel to dab at his face. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of the gun on the floor and pushed it aside with his foot.

“Are… are you okay?” Darcy whimpered, shaking and breathless and terrified.

“Yeah,” he breathed, nodding shakily, “You?”

Then she did let out a little sob and flung herself into him arms. He hugged her with one arm while holding his head up and away so he did not bleed on her.

“We’re safe, okay? I need to call the others and I need to do some, uh, clean-up, so you maybe wanna stay in here a bit longer,” he said.

“Okay,” she whispered and shook her head when he offered to fetch her anything. He left her again, closing the door but she did not lock it behind him. She felt hollow and sickened to hear what must be Clint hefting a body - dead or unconscious, she didn’t know - back out front. He stayed out there a little longer before coaxing her out of the bathroom and into the kitchen.

There was a large hole in the hallway ceiling where Clint had shot through it, and the person he’d hit had spattered blood across the wall and down the stairs. Further along, towards the front door, there was also a large dent in the wall and the small table Clint had been putting the car keys on had been smashed to pieces. He quickly bundled her into the kitchen, which was untouched, and plied her with coffee and cookies, making sure she sat facing out to the back yard. He told her to sit tight - that Natasha was on her way to take her home -  and set about securing the house again, unscrewing the door from the dining room and replacing the splintered front door.

Every time Clint passed by to check on her, he made sure she had something to eat and drink. She didn’t know how long she sat there, nibbling disinterestedly on whatever he put in front of her, while he packed their things back up and stripped the house of weapons.

The Black Widow arrived in due course with a handful of people who looked like SHIELD agents but had ID badges from Stark Industries. They co-ordinated the shipment of all the weapons, intel, and agents Hydra had sent their way and Natasha agreed to take some of Clint’s weapons back to the tower for him. Clint had packed Darcy’s things as well as his own and brought her bags downstairs. She wanted to ask him to pack the black hoodie he’d lent her when on their first night, but she couldn’t find the voice to do it. She heard Clint and Natasha talking in low voices as Clint retrieved the last of the stashed weapons: the gun she’d found in the bathroom cabinet.

“Here, that’s the last one,” he mumbled, “I know she handled it but I don’t know what else.”

Natasha hummed, and there were a few clicks as she checked over the gun, “She wasn’t going to do much with the safety on. Didn’t you teach her how to use it?”

“She shouldn’t have to know.”

There was a non-verbal conversation that Darcy could not see from her safe spot in the kitchen, Clint idly told Natasha to shut up and he brought her through. He was distant, like he had been when they first came out here, and allowed Natasha to scoop Darcy into her care before he disappeared outside to take over supervising the other agents.

Natasha was gentle and comforting, if less openly affectionate than Clint, and soon had Darcy in a warm, fleecy blanket and on one of Stark’s smaller planes, winging their way back to New York. The flight was bumpy and she struggled to keep a steady hold on the styrofoam cup full of tepid coffee. Natasha peppered Darcy with questions about lab procedures - who did what - and the lead up to the day their mail exploded. Darcy felt strange to know it had only been five days. Natasha then showed her a grainy picture, clearly taken from a security camera, and asked her to identify the man in it.

“That’s Inter- I mean Ian. He was our intern in London,” she answered, voice croaking a little, “Are you telling me he blew up our lab? Clint said he was clean. He’s a Hydra agent?”

“We don’t think so. If he is, he’s an incredibly incompetent one. More likely we think Hydra hijacked his account, used his identity to get you or Jane to let slip your location,” Natasha said, cool but not accusatory.

“Jane had to review his internship, give him a reference,” Darcy sniffed, “by which I mean I typed it up in Jane’s email. I didn’t say where we were, but I guess he could trace it back.”

Natasha nodded.

“Whether or not he knew Hydra was shadowing him, we haven’t discerned yet. Steve’s working with MI6 to monitor Boothby’s movements, but you don’t know that,” Natasha said with a tiny smile. Darcy tried to return the expression but found all she could manage was a grimace. Natasha was unperturbed and spent a long minute looking at her intently, like she was trying to spot some miniscule detail.

“Did Clint look after you okay?” Natasha asked calmly and knowingly, and at Darcy’s puzzled reaction added, “It was SHIELD procedure for you to summarize your interaction with one of our agents, I figured it won’t hurt to stick to it. Did he treat you right?”

She tried not to think about the way he’d looked at her, the feeling of being pulled tight against Clint’s chest, about the feel of his lips on hers and his hair as she ran her fingers through it. She worried that if she thought too hard, the Black Widow would read her mind somehow. She nodded and said with a hint of a blush, “he gives really good hugs.”

Natasha just laughed, and Darcy still felt like she had seen right through her.  

Darcy was brought back to the tower and deposited in Tony’s swanky living room where she was greeted by a frantic Jane, and Erik snoring from the couch. Jane was uncharacteristically clingy and the two women hugged their anxiety out all night, with Thor keeping watch over them. Clint had stayed behind, to put the house to bed securely, and it was a good few days after that until Darcy saw him again. He didn’t manage to look her in the eye and made himself scarce in short order.

Getting back into her routine with Jane was like being doused in cold water. The lab still needed a great deal of patching up, and Thor followed them around like an oversized puppy, but Darcy went back to much and such the same life she’d lead as before. Clint didn’t appear for coffee breaks anymore. She barely saw him at all and when she did he gave her an awkward smile and that was it. She tried to tell herself it was fine, that what happened in Iowa stayed in Iowa. But couldn’t lie to herself enough to forget how disappointed she felt. A venomous little voice in her head whispered that maybe Clint’s feelings had all just been a ploy to get her to toe the line while they laid low. He came across as a soldier, like Steve, but he had been a SHIELD agent too. But she could have sworn all the longing and passion she’d seen when he looked at her had been real. Had he changed his mind, now they were back amongst their friends? Did he get in trouble for having feelings for her when he was technically on the job?

It took a couple of days of sleeping too late to remember that Clint had never returned her phone. It was probably still lying in bits in his jacket pocket. She really didn’t want to face asking for it back, since he was so determined to avoid her. She almost didn’t want a phone at all. Darcy contended with quite a lot of things she didn’t really want anymore. She didn’t want the eternal noise of the city, didn’t want to be surrounded by people day and night. She didn’t want to sleep on her own.

Jane must have noticed how down Darcy was feeling because she made a visible effort to be more polite and gentle when she gave Darcy instructions. Thor brought her coffee and cake now and then, which only really made things worse. That had been Clint’s thing and it served as nothing but a reminder that he was not doing it anymore. It was an entire week before Clint showed up in the lab again, waiting until they were packing up for the night to poke his head through the door. He looked tired, like he’d gone straight from the safe house to another mission. Maybe, once free of having to keep an eye on her, he’d been sent to find the people responsible for the whole situation in the first place. He was also sporting a bruise on his cheekbone. At the sight of him, Jane and Erik made themselves scarce pretty quickly and left him with Darcy and what was bound to be a painfully stilted conversation.

“Hey, Darce,” he greeted awkwardly, and pulled her reassembled phone out of his pocket, “You probably want this back.”

“Thanks,” she said feebly, taking the phone from him. She turned it over in her palm a few times - not a scratch on it - but did not turn it on and set it down on her desk. Clint watched her with a hint of anticipation, like he was waiting for the best moment to say something, or waiting for her to say something instead.  

“Sorry, about your house,” she said glumly, not meeting his eyes.

“S’not your fault,” he shrugged, “I was the one who shot through the hallway ceiling.”

“Clint, those guys were trying to kill _me_. They showed up because I was there.”

“Oh! No! They had a tonne of tranqs on them when we searched them. They were probably just going to take you with them. The live fire was for me.”

“Right, that makes me feel _so_ much better.”

They fell into silence, not knowing what to say but neither willing to leave the conversation. Clint looked at her apologetically and she regretted that they hadn’t gotten just that extra day or two to enjoy each other, before the world and its demanding weight was put on their - mostly his - shoulders again. She could not guess at what it was he couldn’t say, and that meant it would probably remain unsaid.

“How’d you get the, uh…” she asked, gesturing to her own cheek. The bruise marring his skin was wide but nowhere near as dark as the one Darcy had had on her shoulder.

“Nat got me in training yesterday,” he shrugged, “It’s nothing, a sign of affection really. If she’d actually meant it, it’d be the whole side of my face.”

“I’ve had worse,” she said, trying to tease but not finding it in her.

“Yeah,” he laughed uneasily, “How’s that healin’ up?”

She pulled down her shirt collar to show him. The bruise on her shoulder was now more yellow than anything else, though the centre retained a hint of burnt red colour. He reached out, as if to touch her shoulder but he cut himself off and looked down at the floor.

“Look, back at the house, all that stuff with… with you and me? What you said about reciprocating…” he tried, “well, I understand if, if you changed your mind… if it wasn’t… I mean, if you want to just forget about it, it’s… “

“Do _you_ want to forget about it?” she asked evenly. She dreaded how much it would hurt if he said yes, if this was him trying to get her to take the out so he didn’t have to actually say it.

“No way, Chickadee.”

Darcy let out a breath she did not realise she was holding, and smiled at the silly name. He was looking at her intently, waiting for her to say something. And the vulnerability, tinged with panic, that usually lingered at the edge of his expression was being pushed back by hope. So what on earth was she waiting for? Warm relief flooded her as she slid her arms over his shoulders and brought her face in close to his. It felt right. It felt like home. He rested his hands on her hips, still waiting for the word.

“Me neither, Hawkguy,” she said softly, and pulled him down into a kiss.


End file.
